Everything was going so well with my bread dough this morning. It was sitting on the counter for its final rise in the banneton and I was preheating my clay baker. I didn’t know what the loud noise was from. It was quick and then gone. I thought it was coming from my ice maker in the refrigerator. It was time to put my beautifully risen loaf of cranberry pecan into the my clay baker so it could bake. Funny, I didn’t remember leaving the oven light on. Hmmm, I hadn’t turned the oven light on. NO! The light was the ELECTRICAL FIRE in my oven caused by the entire electrical element snapping off and shorting out! So I not only won’t have a loaf of bread, I HAVE NO OVEN! Yeah, never saw this one coming…!
I do thank and praise God for His protection! I may have lost my oven BUT not my house or even my kitchen. The fire was contained to the electrical element inside my oven. Granted, I have lost this loaf of bread as I now have no way to bake it or cook anything else that needs an oven for that matter. On the plus side, I think the stovetop still works, if I can get brave enough to try turning on a burner.
I’m going to sit here and finish sipping my coffee and watch my ever expanding loaf of dough turn into one heck of a science experiment.
Oh dear Leah, I’m happy that you are fine and that the only casualty is the oven and nothing else. Try an experiment and try steaming your loaf. Or if you have a toaster oven try steaming it first and then browning it in the toaster oven. Maybe you can salvage something from your dough.
Unfortunately, dear Benny, the dough is already in the waste bin as I totally had NO idea what to do with it.
My sweet husband is trying to figure out if we can simply get a replacement element for our oven. He found one online for only $30 but the oven is over 30+ years old and we have no idea of the model number, etc.
This is the day the LORD has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. Figuring out what to do next may be a bit more challenging. Nothing God can’t handle though, with some prayer and His answers as we await the next episode in the continued adventures of “Fire in the Hole”
My sweet husband was able to find a replacement electrical element for our old oven at a local appliance store. He installed it and IT WORKS! I now have a working oven once again for all of $41.00.
Thus ends the saga of “Fire in the Hole” as this is the series finale.
I’m sorry to hear about your oven fire, Leah, but glad everything turned out ok. Well, today our microwave caught fire! It was not food but an element. Fortunately, it was my husband who was using it and not me and he knew just what to do, the first of which was to not panic; I was in the next room and didn’t even know it happened, except for an unusual smell. But he’s not attempting to fix it, which is not his natural tendency. I hope things don’t run in threes for Breadtopians today!
@Arlo48 OH…MY…GOODNESS!! I am declaring, in Jesus name, that your microwave and my oven are IT and no more Breadtopians are going to have kitchen incidents! I certainly hope your kitchen and home are OK. I realize your microwave is probably toast though. Sorry, bad pun considering this IS a BREAD forum.
I’m going to go make myself a nice hot cuppa pumpkin spiced coffee after all, today is the first day of Fall.
@veideway I got my math wrong! Our oven isn’t 30+ years old. It’s 40+ years old! Our home was built in 1978 and the oven is the original one in it. Even more astonishing that we were able to get a replacement element, isn’t it?
You are so right. It could have been SO much worse.
@Leah1 and @Arlo48 I’m glad you’re both okay. Whew lotta appliance failure. Fingers crossed about the “in threes” thing. And hat tip to your husband, Leah, for sourcing the part and repairing the oven!
I wish I could have done the same with my oven, but to add to the stories of woe here, it’s been miserably, dreadfully, woefully breadless in homebreadbakerland for the past two weeks. Thank the good lord that as I write at this moment a factory authorized Wolf repair dude is in our kitchen right now diagnosing (and I hope repairing) our oven.
We couldn’t bring ourselves to eat store bread.
Edit: Clarification - luckily no fire here, just an oven that stopped heating up.
I replaced my 20 year old oven last year. I had replaced the oven heating elements several times after experiencing the same type of burnouts that Leah had.
I shopped a number of high end ovens and one of my first questions was about parts and repair. I live in the mountains about an hour and a half from all the appliance stores and was told I couldn’t get the parts and service for my area would involve a trip charge and a two week notice before they could come to me.
I ended up getting a contractor grade basic oven from Home Depot because I know I can get parts and fix things myself on the basic ones.
A note to you Leah. Be sure to check the oven temp with your new heating element. The thickness of the elements has gone down over the years and I’ve had one that took a while longer to come up to temperature.
@dave_r 'Morning. My husband, a retired civil engineer, suggested checking the oven temperature too. Honestly, I dismissed his suggestion as just “being an engineer” but I suppose I should check it. I keep an oven thermometer in the oven and have known I have to set my thermostat 25 degrees lower than the temperature I need because the oven always ran “hot” with that thermostat. Now that it has a new element I should do some checking before baking another loaf of bread. Last night I baked some fish. It came out just fine.
I may prep another loaf of bread today to bake tomorrow. Maybe…
I’m so sorry about your endless breadlessness. Are you going to make a go at grilling bread?
Here’s my kinda strange broken oven story from a while ago. @Leah1 Your husband might enjoy this saga.
Once upon a time…my oven stopped working after a storm. Transformer had blown near our house and the oven no longer made heat, but relays were going on and off to indicate some parts were working.
Mr. Fermentada tested the heating element and it wasn’t broken. He then tested the control panel (see photo) and nothing seemed wrong. Finally, one of many youtube videos he watched made him suspect the problem was external to the house.
It turned out that when the electric company repaired the transformer, they connected the phases wrong and we were getting 120V only and not 240V. The oven was our only appliance affected, and only some parts of the oven…the 240V ones.
Electric company came back, redid the repair at the pole, and voila!
And now Mr. Fermentada is very familiar with the innards of our oven. Meanwhile I took apart the door and cleaned it because that’s my skill set lol.
@Fermentada - wow, Mr. Fermentada gets a big for breaking out the voltage meter. I did also pull mine out of the drawer, but only to test that I was indeed getting 240V out of the outlet. …And I was, so due to the oven being fancy and expensive and still under warranty… my voltage meter sadly went back into the drawer.
I’ve got no stone that would fit on our weber so no grilled bread. I have been thinking about building a brick wood-fired oven in the yard for pizza (and occasionally bread)… but so many other projects ahead of that one on the to-do and honey-do lists that I don’t know if I’ll ever get to it.
Nothing God can’t handle though, with some prayer and His answers as we await the next episode in the continued adventures of “Fire in the Hole”
way to go!
after all, today is the first day of Fall. 
Finally, one of many youtube videos he watched made him suspect the problem was external to the house.
for breaking out the voltage meter. I did also pull mine out of the drawer, but only to test that I was indeed getting 240V out of the outlet. …And I was, so due to the oven being fancy and expensive and still under warranty… my voltage meter sadly went back into the drawer.